The PeaceHealth Story

With more than a century of service to Northwest communities, PeaceHealth strives to make health care available to everyone.

Just as each individual is a unique creation, each community we serve has its own personality and needs. Our strength lies in honoring this diversity while realizing the advantage of working together as one health care system.

​​

In Service to Our Communities

In addition to caring for individual patients, PeaceHealth has a strong commitment to improving the health of the communities in which it serves. Among the many collaborative, community health improvement initiatives underway throughout the health system are:

Southeast AlaskaAlaskans for Drug-Free Youth

A grant-funded collaborative program focusing on community education, alcohol and tobacco cessation, and drug prevention and treatment.

Whatcom RegionHand-in-Hand for Health and Learning

A collaborative project between the hospital and rural schools with the intent of pursuing access to health insurance, a medical home, and increasing access to dental care.

Lower Columbia RegionHealthy Teeth

A community partnership providing dental care for Medicare-eligible adults and children in and around Longview, Washington.

PeaceHealth has partnered with Siuslaw High School and Lane Community College to establish a 'Health Occupations Career Pathway' that begins with high school sophomores and ends with an Associate Degree in Nursing. The goal is to provide local students the opportunity to complete their nursing education in Florence, while at the same time meet the nurse staffing needs of our local health system.

"The ministry of working with the community — with people who are poor and powerless — has been so enlivening and, in all my years of ministering, the closest to our congregational charisma. What we are able to accomplish could not have been done without the cooperation of PeaceHealth. We learn so much from the people we serve."

Extending the PeaceHealth Mission

The El Salvador Health Mission provides the opportunity for PeaceHealth and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace — through volunteer participation of employees and congregational affiliates — to bring human and material resources to people in a country with inadequate health care.

The compelling motivation for the project is two-fold. Not only does it help those most in need — people who have little or no access to health services — in an impoverished country, but it provides a transformational experience for PeaceHealth participants. The champions of the project believe it enriches the soul of our organization by deepening our own self-realization of the PeaceHealth mission. At the same time, the El Salvador Health Mission is a formal mechanism for providing medical supplies and equipment to meet the health needs of the extreme poor in El Salvador.

"The vision of the El Salvador Health Mission is large. Guided by a sense of global responsibility, we seek to enrich the soul of our organization. This is realized through the personal experiences of PeaceHealth employees and staff physicians who serve with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace in a Third-World setting. Upon their return, project volunteers often express a personal need to contribute to the greater good at home."